


Bonds

by Kharon



Series: Red [10]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Future Fic, Gen, Next Generation, Suna Village
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 05:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13897371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kharon/pseuds/Kharon
Summary: He lands on the wall with a crack, blowing up a cloud of dust and sand.Nobody moves. Nobody speaks.The wind catches in Akaya's red hair, making it dance around her like living fire.





	Bonds

**Author's Note:**

> Music: [NARUTO Main Theme '16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dky7S2lauV0)

He lands on the wall with a crack, blowing up a cloud of dust and sand.

Nobody moves. Nobody speaks.

The wind catches in Akaya's red hair, making it dance around her like living fire.

"Aka-" they finally begin at the same time and then fall silent. He wants to both laugh and cry at the familiarity of it.

This is his _sister_ , the one that came to him at night when she's had a bad dream, the one he taught how to walk up a wall when they were ten, the one that screamed that at the teacher who'd said if he didn't become a healer it would be a waste of his great chakra control. He can't-

"You shouldn't be here, brother," she tells him, voice sad and eyes hard.

"It's my home as much as yours," he answers and watches her tense, hands curling into fists at her sides.

"You," she growls, "You abandoned Sunagakure."

Me. _You abandoned me. You left me. You didn't come back._ That's what her eyes tell him.

Akashi looks at her, wants to grin but knows that what is on his face is more a pained grimace than anything else. Then he shakes his head.

"No," he whispers, "I really never could."

A second later she is on him.

Sasori is prepared however and pivots on his heels so the giant fist of sand she throws at him misses and gets tangled in his cloak instead, ripping it off his shoulders and sending it flying into the air. It billows in the wind, blocking the sunlight for a heartbeat that gives him enough cover to send two shuriken flying with a flick of his wrist.

She dodges one and swats away the other with a cloud of sand while a sweep of her hand sends a new wave of sand at him.

This one is too big to easily avoid, and so Sasori shoulders through, his chakra cloak preventing the tiny particles from slicing open his skin.

Ideally he'd like to have more space, to be able to move around her with enough distance to predict and avoid almost all of her attacks, but leading her to chase him into the desert would mean his death, and jumping down into the village the large-scale destruction of Sunagakure.

Like this – up on the wall – neither of them has the advantage, and that's as good as it will get.

He closes the distance between them with a sudden leap, fainting a high kick and aiming an elbow at her exposed belly as a burst of sand knocks away his foot. It's a perfectly executed combo, but even twenty years later they know each other inside out.

Her fist, coated with hardened sand, brushes his cheek the same moment his elbow scrapes her ribs. She will bruise, but only the chakra on top of his skin saves him from a broken cheekbone.

The stinger of the scorpion vanishes.

They jump apart in the blink of an eye. Sasori throws two more shuriken as he retreats, but they hit a minor Air Sand Protective Wall that she conjures with a move of her hand, and he loses sight of the Kazekage for a few precious seconds before it dissolves.

It's instinct that makes him dance to the side and out of the way of a shower of Sand Bullets the size of his fists. Instead of him they hit the hardened dirt of the wall, leaving dents in the earth.

Pushing chakra into his legs he _shunshin_ 's into her back, bursting what he knows his a Sand Clone apart with a single punch, and flickers through another ray of Sand Bullets, only to feel the ground become liquid beneath his feet.

There is not enough sand in the substance of the barrier to make for a large-area Prison Sand Burial, but it's enough so she could actually burry him up to his midriff, and Sasori knows that he can't allow her to catch him. Constant movement is the only thing that'll keep him alive in this fight.

Two adjourning pieces of the scorpion's tail vanish as he breathes in deep, weaving enough chakra through the muscles of his right arm and shoulder to make them burn.

One precise punch is all it takes to shatter the edge of the plateau into nothing but tiny clumps of earth that rain down onto the outer ring of the village. Sasori falls with them, freed of the sand, and twists in midair to land on the inside of the wall running.

"Wind Release: Cast Net!" he hears his sister shout from above.

Contrary to her sand very condensed wind chakra actually _can_ slice through his chakra cloak.

Sasori does the only sensible thing he can do to avoid getting shredded into pieces: he stops channeling chakra into the soles of his feet and drops.

He hits the ground hard, stirring up a cloud of dust that conceals the Earth Shadow Clone he summons. It launches itself up the wall and straight at Akaya while he substitutes himself with a gecko waiting for the first rows of sunlight to warm its skin hanging high up inside the gate.

The first part of the scorpion's body disappears.

All the other Suna shinobi are gone and he hears faint noise from inside the village, but can't spare any thought to what is happening there.

Hidden in the shadow of the wall he casts another clone before he jumps up and hauls himself on top of the wall while one more part of the scorpion vanishes from his skin.

A _sunshin_ puts him beside his clone instantly, both of them attacking her with kunai, not giving her a chance to disengage – contrary to Gaara, she could never make sand stick to her skin, nor did the sand never protect her without prompt.

She knows that he knows of course, it's all old tricks to both of them, and a giant fist of sand forms at his right side and swats him away like a fly while she catches his clone in a Sand Binding, the pressure destroying it easily, but the exploding mud drenching most of the sand around it.

The force of the impact makes him wheeze when Sasori lands on the ground hard. At least one of his ribs is cracked, his chakra cloak unable to minimize that much brute force.

Rolling sideways and to his feet he evades several long, impossibly sharp Suna kunai. His ribs slow him down however, and she notices instantly.

A faint simmering around her hands is all the warning he gets before a series of Blades of Wind come flying at him, unseen and deadly.

Hardening the chakra on his skin to the point where it's _bleeding_ his reserves away, Sasori rushes forward, sliding through the blades as good as he can with a kunai ready in the one hand and his last three shuriken in the other.

One of the blades hits it's mark, slicing open his left upper arm, but he hardly notices, fixated instead on his opponent and the second clone advancing on her back.

It's the sand all over the ground that alerts her, but when she swirls around and throws another Blade of Wind it's already too late. The attack hits the Lightning Shadow Clone dead on, but its hand is on her arm, and the chakra it's made of discharges in one white-hot thunderbolt.

Two of his three shuriken find their mark, sinking into her chest and shoulder, but his left hand is useless, and the precious seconds it takes him to switch his kunai to the right are enough for a wave of sand to knock him off balance while she stumbles back, dazed.

Their gazes lock. Hers eyes are pretty, and wide with fear. _His little sister_.

Akashi hesitates for a heartbeat and misses, his kunai hitting her side instead of her heart.

A pained scream tears from her lips and time stops as he watches her eyes turn cold.

_I'm sorry, I'm so sor-_

Sand rises up all around him. Both pincers of the scorpion vanish at once, giving Sasori the burst of chakra he needs to flicker out of the impending sand prison just in time, the sand closing on the spot where he stood an instant ago with an ominous crunch.

Then Akaya is on him, coiling her sand around him like a living thing, tendrils lashing out to hit him, hold him, crush him.

He is not fast enough to dodge them all, one hitting him square in the chest and sending him flying. She's too slow to follow through on it though, still stunned from the lightning – instead sand pools beneath his feet again and he knows that with all those broken ribs he can't keep sidestepping it.

"Earth Release: Earth and Stone Dragon," he mumbles, and the head of the scorpion tattoo vanishes as he pours the last of his stored chakra into the wall itself, breaks it apart from the foundation up to reform in the form of a giant dragon.

It roars like a real living thing – or maybe that's him, he can' tell anymore – and bears down on Akaya.

Sand closes around his ankles, his legs, his hips, creeping up his chest, the pressure unbearable.

There are tears on his face and more tears gleaming on her cheeks, and he wants to reach out, to brush them away and hug her close.

The dragon's mouth is on her.

Something _gives_ in his chest.

 _Pain_. Red, and hot. It's everywhere. He can't feel his legs anymore, can't feel his arms, his body, _nothing_. Just pain, pain around him, pain inside of him, mixed with the tears and maybe he his screaming.

Or maybe he is dreaming. Or flying, he feels like he is flying, falling, down an endless abyss.

Akaya is just in front of him. _Red_. He is chasing her, running after her, begging for her to not leave him. He is cold without her, so cold. Akashi needs her. He shouts her name, over and over, but all he can see is the red of her hair. Red like his. Red like blood, almost.

 _No, no, no, don't leave me!_ Someone is screaming, he is, but she is too, repeats his name all over again, but there is only darkness around him, no red to guide him, no trace of her.

He doesn't understand, turns around and around, swirls around the midnight darkness in search of green eyes. There is something, just a sliver, but it's not the right color, darker, brighter, his mother's eyes looking at him. _Love_. _I love you so much_.

She's calling his name, too. _Akashi. Akashi. Akashi._

There are hands, suddenly. He is alone again, but he feels hands… on his face? He has no face, no body, is only a breeze in the wind, but the hands they pull at him. They tear him away. They _hurt_ , and he fights them, trashes and screams.

"Akashi!" someone cries, far away, but he can still hear it. The voice belongs to the hands. He knows it, but doesn't know how, wants to be with the voice but shrinks away from the hands, claws, tearing at him.

They are strong, stronger than him, they tear into his flesh and _hurt_. Pain his everywhere again, blood red mist behind his eyes, but he can do nothing, can't run, can't _breathe_.

Akashi screams in agony.

The claws are tearing at his neck, and then there is blood in his mouth, thick and warm and bitter.

He wants to spit it out but can't. The monster won't let him, forces him to bit deeper into the flesh that is suddenly beneath his teeth. Or is he the monster? Whom is he killing?

A heartbeat. He thinks it's his own, fast and trembling, weak like a newborn, but then there is more, a second one, hammering, strong to his weak one, but just as urgent.

 _Warmth_ spreads through him, like sunlight touching his skin.

He relishes in it, lets it drive the pain and darkness away, lets it make him whole again, slow and steady. His head, his shoulders, his chest, his arms, his legs, his hands and feet. The warmth seeps into every part of him, makes him _human_ again.

"Akashi, Akashi, Akashi…" she mumbles into his ear, her fingers touching the back of his head. They are curled in his hair, cradling his head to her body.

Her voice. He remembers it, like from a dream.

His eyes are crusted shut with sand and tears, but he forces them open anyway.

Bright sunlight makes him blink heavily, and then he sees the clear blue sky of wind country. There are vultures circling high above, and the stench of blood is in the air.

It takes effort to break away from her, to pull his teeth out of her shoulder, away from the pure _chakra_ he was sucking from her.

He spits blood, wants to move his head and falters, fighting down a wave of nausea, but her hands are still holding him and then he is looking into her eyes. They are red and black, a Sharingan with swirls, tiny flames dancing away from her pupils, making her eyes look like black suns.

She is smiling through bloody tears.

_Akane._

"We have to go. Now," a male voice urges from beside them.

Akashi manages to tear his gaze away from Akane and look at the man.

His eyes are red. Not Sharingan, but red, red like… _Karin's eyes_ , he remembers.

The man nods to him, and then everything goes black.

**Author's Note:**

> This is it. Thanks for staying with me and Akashi to the end. 
> 
> Words beginning with capital letters are jutsu. Nobody will ever be able to fully kill the Uzumaki. I don't know what else to say.
> 
> Maybe there will be an epilogue.


End file.
